Is That Legal?

For those who want a link to original thread at Volokh instead of a link to CNN's election news, here's a permalink:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_08_07-2005_08_13.shtml#1123863417

I seem to remember a house represenative or two from the Northeast suggesting that the iraqi 'resistance' was was in the moral right, but strangely enough there's nothing on it outside of a couple blogs that actually pay attention to the House... strange, eh?

Not that it really matters, but actually only three MLB players have ever hit 700 plus homers: Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds. A Japanese player, Oh, hit over 700, as did, I think, Negro League player Josh Gibson.

I find the choice of the term "witch hunt" to be ironic, considering that his (Volokh's) past defense of torture is perhaps most effectively challenged by a close (or even cursory) look at the history of witch hunting and persecution in early modern Europe.

That was my point, Glenn. (About the home run hitters, that is.)

I left this at that "v" place:

'Good and honest' Iraqis fighting US forces

By Phil Sands, Staff Reporter
Published: 9/6/2005, 06:25 (UAE)
Link
Tikrit
A senior US military chief has admitted "good, honest" Iraqis are fighting American forces.
Major General Joseph Taluto said he could understand why some ordinary people would take up arms against the US military because "they're offended by our presence".
In an interview with Gulf News, he said: "If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could [want to fight us]."
General Taluto also admitted he did not know how many insurgents there were. "I stay away from numbers how can I quantify this? We can make estimates by doing some kind of guesswork," he said.
He added: "Who knows how big these networks are, or how widespread? I know it's substantial enough to be a threat to the government and it will be for some time."

Why are you taking seriously anything posted by a man who advocated following Iran's example and publicly torturing condemned criminals before they are executed?

Oh, excuse me, rightwingers remind me that Volokh only meant that for the most egregious cases, like serial murderers. That is, until he gets bored and decides that pre-execution torture/dismemberment should be extended to those convicted of manslaughter or rape or shoplifting from a Republican-owned supermarket.

"This James Petras character?"

Petras studied imperialism and the resistance to imperialism, subjects that tend to put one in a more or less irritable mode regarding the American escapade.

But Bloggers be oh so very important! And their debates be so very significant. Ignorance never stop bloggers. Heck, faced with no knowledge, just make shit up.

This post ain't much less wanking than the V gang.

Game, set and match to Steve J.!

This is all about the mythical "Dolchstoss" or "stab in the back". That's where the people responsible for the grand fuckup blame somebody else for it. It worked for Germany's ruling classes in the post-World-War-I era (their scapegoats of choice being -- surprise! -- lefties, Jews, and other non-Aryans), so of course the neo-cons must give it a whirl.

The religio-racist right can never, ever admit that a) invading Iraq was a bad idea, b) BushCo lied about why they wanted to invade, c) anyone with a brain and who wasn't on the boards of any oil companies (such as most of the Pentagon's general staff -- most of whom drive hybrid cars) knew it was a bad idea, and/or d) the post-invasion situation was gone from bad to worse to horrible. So that's why they have to pretend that the Great Big All-Powerful Left (which is so powerful that it got John Kerry and a Democratic Congress elected in 2004 -- oh, wait, that didn't happen, did it?), and not their own fuck-up-itude, is to blame.

Then there's the fact that he resorted to citing a dang Democratic Underground thread. Not their finest hour.

"They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."

President George W. Bush
4/13/04

Is it more pathetic or more maddening that these people are just now starting to get an inkling that we don't support the terrorists? What's next? That they find out we don't hate America too? Is nothing sacred anymore?

I wish I could play poker with these guys; they don't seem to understand that when you keep upping your bet with a Queen high and everyone else is calling, it's time to fold (although if you were smart you wouldn't have started in the first place.)

And maybe it's just me, but should Volokh have had the evidence for his claim prior to asserting that it was true?

nice way to lie about the quote. Full quote:

http://www.brown.edu/Students/INDY/archives/2005-04-07/articles/opin-sperber_resist.htm

"Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allied governments to withdraw from Iraq."

Clearly what that means is that she's sniffing at the idea that the resistance has to be "pristine". If that's not enough for you, the author at the link says that she supports the resistance "unconditionally". Guess that's another super rare Babe Ruth!

Too bad you have to lie to make your point. Oh well.

Someday soon these fools will wake up naked in the middle of the town square and realize it was all just a dream. The dream part being that they ever had any clothes on at all.

As I have stated over the past couple of years, not only are the right-wing "warbloggers" wrong or misguided on just about every issue, they are also ideological fanatics of the first order.

They simply deny, evade, or try to spin every fact that is antithetical to their narrow views. What makes them dangerous is their intellectual inflexibility; they simply cannot admit error or backtrack when faced with so much factual evidence that is contrary to their dogma or ideas. I don't think they consider themselves liars because their fanatical ideology blinds them from such honest self-criticism. I think the absence of self-criticism in an intellectual is the first indication he/she has crossed the line into unhealthy fanaticism.

I think the central issue in these blogosphere pissing contests is how, with our sophisticated, skeptical, and highly enlightened higher education system, we have produced a generation of narrow, angry, right-thinking pseudo intellectuals who both distort and pervert the enlightenment mechanisms they should have learned from this system.

While I agree the left has suffered its share of fanatics, they always--always--existed on the fringes. Nowadays the fanatics from the right are the mainstream voices of their ideology.

Scott Lemieux wrote And maybe it's just me, but should Volokh have had the evidence for his claim prior to asserting that it was true?

Or at least an exit strategy...

Interesting that James Petras, in the article you link to, castigates the entire "left" for not rallying to the insurgents' side. Maybe he should contact Volokh and find out who's not returning his phone calls.

Would you fight for your country?

David Kopel apparently believes that if America is attacked and invaded fighting back against the invaders would be wrong. Mr. Kopel seems to think that Americans should simply accept the foreign invaders as the rightful rulers and as such he would collaborate with them to ensure a peaceful overthrow of the American government.

How do we know this?

Because when someone told him that Janeane Garofalo suggesting fighting the invaders like in the movie Red Dawn, Mr. Kopel likened her actions to terrorists. So either Mr. Kopel is in favor of the terrorists (in which case likening Ms. Garofalo isn't derogatory) or he feels acting in such a manner to defend the United States of America is wrong.

Personally, having done an enlistment in the Navy during the Gulf War, I feel it's right to defend the United States from foreign invaders, but I can understand how people like Mr. Kopel might be too frightened by the prospect of putting their own lives on the line for their country. So I don't judge Mr. Koppel. I only hope that if America is invaded there are more people willing to fight, and less people like David Kopel.

It's not Volokh and other prominent bloggers who really have the Left (and, apparently, most of Muller's readers) upset. It's simply much easier for them to fulminate against the technicalities of Volokh's premise than it is to deal with the (to them) inconceivable premise that they've hitched their wagon to the wrong horse.

The people with whom the anti-war Left has made common cause are murderous fascists, and yes, when you glom onto murderous fascists, you tend to get tarred by whatever is on the brush they're holding - and the defeat of American/Western capitalist democracy is what the anti-war Left supports. Not knowingly, in many cases, but that's no excuse.

Great comment, Mat. You put my thoughts into very eloquent words.

What do you mean 'turning into?' For the right, it's been a witch hunt since 1994. They can't QUIT finding witches or boogeymen. They're just in the habit of being scapegoat-hunters, and are incapable of any kind of self-analysis.

That's why Rumsfeld still has a job, why Bush got re-elected, and why Cindy Sheehan is being called a liar.

Basically, though these guys may be intellectually smart, they're not intellectually honest, and they're emotional five-year-olds.

Disabled Danger, what a wonderful screen name. It made my day.
MDA

You characterize the Crusades as a "thousand-year-old series of non-Muslim efforts to assert control over Muslim lands." Well, how did they get to be "Muslim lands" in the first place? Not by peaceful expansion or proselytization. By the violence of Muslim armies, which took over much of the Middle East, the Byzantine Empire, and parts of Europe. (As your link to Wikipedia itself suggests.)

Muslims, of course, tend to view the history of Muslim aggressive wars as entirely justified; and any attempt at resistance (many of the Crusades) as incredibly offensive. "How dare the Christians fight back against our jihad!"

Eric,
Just a quick thank you for your interventions in the comments threads over at the VC. The rudeness of some commenters (there and, unfortunately, now here) notwithstanding, you do much to keep the discussion focused where it belongs. I suppose putting up with insults and invective is part of the cost of the conversation but it would be nice if all the conversants were able to maintain a baseline level of civility.

Gryphon - you honor your fake name with that post right out of Republican/knucklehead mythology.

So these anti-war left (seems to me there was a time when being anti war meant just that) want the defeat of American capitalism but they don't know it. Are you talking about the Democratic plans for health care reform and a progressive income tax?
You do know the Iraq reconstruction is all about oligarchs, fraud, missing money and kickbacks right? No bid seems to be the antithesis of the capitalist system.
PS - premises don't have technicalities

David Kopel apparently believes that if America is attacked and invaded fighting back against the invaders would be wrong.

Now you know why some of us are calling these hippy-dippy wingnuts out for their antiwar pacifism and their limp-wristed tree-hugging appeasement of the United Nations, which has successfully forced Americans to spend billions of dollars restoring the Iraqi marshlands and making Central Asia safe for vacation tourism.

Ed,

The problem with Ms. Garofalo's analogy to "Red Dawn" is that it isn't particularly apt, for at least a couple of reasons:

1. In real life, the "insurgents" are killing a lot more "native" civilians (and military and police) than they are Americans. Say what you will about the Wolverines, but I think they were more interested in targeting Russians (and Cubans) than Americans.

2. There's a logical problem in equating a "resistance" movement trying to rid a country of foreign domination with one whose sole purpose is to create enough chaos that the implementation of representative gov't is impossible. In other words, the tactics of the "insurgents" directly frustrate the Garofalo-goal of ridding the country of crusaders since their very actions delay the inevitable withdrawal. (OTOH, if you believe that the US has some long-term colonial desire and that there is no intention of leaving, I think we'd just be talking past each other).

3. The apparent head dude of the "resistance" (or one of them) is a Jordanian. It's hard for me to take seriously claims that people are fighting for their country when their ranks and leadership positions are peppered with foreigners.

Isn't that the essential problem with the sad, sorry right: either-or thinking, conceptual rigidity, inability to recognize, let alone understand, thinking that is not in line with their preconceptions? Since these are based on faith, they are not arguable.

It is sad, indeed, for we are losing potentially constructive members of our society. Perhaps a place for them can be found when we are incorporated into Greater Iraq after co-Presidents Garofalo and Moore lead the insurgents to victory.

The Crusades were defensive? Resistance? Wow, I'll let my people (Jews) who died at the hands of Christians know that we could have saved a lot of lives by not attacking Christianity with our...um....usury and use of the Black Plague to kill people!!! And blood libel!!! :)

Wanker:

Are you really calling me out for posting pseudonymously?

And I would love to engage you, but I'm afraid your complete disregard for what I said and the incoherence of your purported response precludes any sort of give-and-take.

And by the way - if I want your opinion about my syntax I'll beat it out of you.

Justin:

Refusing to acknowledge facts doesn't negate them. Christian crusaders killed a shitload of Jews, yes. That doesn't change the fact that they existed as a response to murderous Muslim rampages.

1150 AD
Islam: "Convert or die, infidel!"
Christianity: "Convert or die, infidel!"

2005 AD
Islam: "Convert or die, infidel!"
Christianity: "Excuse me - would you mind reading this pamphlet?"

Re: Crusades
I don't think the earlier post was meant to excuse the Crusades in all its excesses. However, the wars cannot fairly be characterized as a "thousand-year-old series of non-Muslim efforts to assert control over Muslim lands." At least not without context. I know this sounds suspiciously like "You guys started it!" but I think it approaches dishonesty to imply that the Crusades were divorced from the previous Arab aggression.

Actually, evidence of the real context of the Crusades shows that the connections tying the Crusades' wars of agression with the earlier (pre-and-early-Islamic) Byzantine Empire's control over the area that involved military warfare (though, of course, that was warfare over the Romans, who were dying anyways and had previously conquered the area, again by force).

The actual "context" of the Crusades was political pressure on the Pope to excuse internal corruption by creating a scapegoat. That scapegoat was the Muslims, who, however they initiated their control over the land, had it pretty much free and clear of any question of legitimacy at the time. In doing so, not only did they use severely questionable tactics against both Muslims (who did not use only the most honest of tactics themselves) and Jews (who mostly got slaughtered), but they actually INITIATED THE CONFLICT AND STARTED A WAR OF AGGRESSION.

This has now gotten so off topic, that this will be my last reply on the subtopic.

blah-the quote at the top of that page is Arundhati Roy, who is not the author of the article. I won't assume you were lying to make your point, however, just that your reading comprehension skills are not up to snuff.

Didn't Volokh drool over a sadistic execution (whipping, stabbing, and "slow throttling," IIRC) in Iran, that land of Manichean moral clarity? It isn't a wholly bad thing that he did, since it will keep him from ever getting a judicial appointment. But it should also mean that he has forfeited his credentials to discuss the morality of anything. EV, like anyone who approves of torture, has no bona fides to evaluate whether this is the moral equivalent of that. Certainly if he wanted to pretend he had standing to take part in such discussion, he would at least have to learn to keep his shocking terrible naughty badboy provocations to himself; but this enterprise of trying to expose opposition to Bush's war as supporters of the insurgents shows he can't even manage that smidgen of circumspection. Why give him the time of day?

Arundhati Roy is from Indian. She lives in India. She could JOIN the goddamn insurgency and she still wouldn't be a "Western" commentator allying with the insurgents.

Ms. Roy writes in English for a primarily western audience, publishes in British newspapers, gives talks at peace seminars in the U.S. and Europe. She certainly moves in the circles of the people being discussed (didn't she write the forward for one of Chomsky's books?). In context, I think it was pretty obvious that the phrase "western commentator" was meant to exclude the 47 trillion "commentators" living in the middle east, publishing in Arabic, and hating the west.

Excluding Ms. Roy from the group of western commentators that we're discussing splits a hair beyond recognition. Indeed, in the pantheon of English-speaking peacenik-types, she probably ranks higher Michael Moore.

Jimbeaux stated "It's hard for me to take seriously claims that people are fighting for their country when their ranks and leadership positions are peppered with foreigners."

Does that include foreigners such as: Marquis de Lafayette, Johann de Kalb, Friedrich von Steuben, Tadeusz Kościuszko and Casimir Pulaski?

Interesting point, but inapposite since I was talking about Ms. Garofalo's false analogy with the protagonists in "Red Dawn."

But I should have been more complete: "peppered (and that's an understatement) with foreigners who spend most of their time blowing up citizens of the country they claim to protect." Is that better? Call me when you uncover evidence that the Marquis de Lafayette was sending retarded teenagers strapped with TNT into Boston taverns.

I don't give an airborne intercourse what language Ms. Roy writes in or what books she prefaces. She is a citizen of a country not involved in that particular war, so she has NO obligation whatsoever to refrain from align with side A or B of the conflict.

What does torture-lover Volokh want, try her for treason?

Jeez, when did this turn from "let's find out what people are saying and maybe criticize those statements" to "let's decide what obligations people have"? I'm really not familiar with Ms. Roy's writings, but I don't see how her citizenship should make her immune from criticism (assuming that she said something worth criticizing).

No one said anything about treason.